I think I am in love.
Even though I have a zoo at my house, I would still love to have a cat. Three birds, a dog, two kids and a tankful of fish is just not enough for me. But I have allergies so it was not meant to be. In the meantime I will listen to this song. Again, and again.
Did you hear about the case of five woman being shot and then buried alive in Pakistan? No? Well, pry yourself away from the Obama/McCain/Palin/Biden chatter for a second and I’ll tell you all about it.
Balochistan Senator Sardar Israrullah Zehri stunned the upper house on Friday when he defended the recent incident of burying alive three teenage girls and two women in his province, saying it was part of “our tribal custom.”
Senator Bibi Yasmin Shah of the PML-Q raised the issue citing a newspaper report that the girls, three of them aged between 16 and 18 years, had been buried alive a month ago for wishing to marry of their own will.
Just wrap your brain around that for a second. It’s pretty easy to get complacent in your Western, liberal bubble and forget that all these rights that we take for granted do not exist for so many people. I can happily live with my partner, avoid marriage or choose to end a relationship with next to no consequences, while on the other side of the world five women get shot and buried alive for wishing to choose their marriage partners while government officials defend it as a “tribal custom”. This is a horrific example of brutality. No one has been arrested for this outrage yet and the incident is being investigated. Giving up bustiers and nail polish seems like a small, insignificant and painless gesture.
I already live my life free of most feminine accessories. How about if next time I get invited to a wedding, instead of politely declining, instead I launch into one of my speeches about how marriage is a tool of the patriarchy? This may just result in my friends giving me a blank look, but it seems preferable to the alternatives.
I was thinking that it would be fun to guarantee my vast legions of fans that I will make at least one post a week and take advantage of wordpress’s time feature. I can make a post automatically show up on this blog anytime that I want. Every Friday at 4:20 a post will magically appear on this blog. Why did I choose the time for this post Friday at 4:20? Because it’s after school on a Friday, why else? I am a school marm, after all.
This particular 4:20 pic was taken last summer when we were riding the ferry from Gabriola Island to the mainland and onto Victoria when we went on a road trip last summer. Why would somebody go and put 4:20 on there? How would I know? I get very annoyed with random acts of vandalism but if I have a camera and I see 4:20 I got to snap a pic. It’s sick but there it is.
Thanks to the highly successful reefer madness campaign of the past 100 or more years, anybody that makes the sensible choice to smoke a joint over drinking a beer or chewing bubble gum, is a criminal with guilt issues. And it seems to me that the reefer madness is growing all the time.
Consider these recent articles that I found on my MAP INC mailing list.
It’s enough to make a good cop cry! The author is whining because a guy with a backpack, I mean a dangerous drug dealer got away thanks to a bad ruling by a judge. The existence of drug prohibition is so ingrained that he fails to question the necessity of the police chasing down a random suspect in order to take 680 grams of cocaine and $1720 in cash. Don’t the police have better things to do?
Then there is this sordid tale of highway robbery by the legal system, covered by some sanctimonious twit that refers to a houseful of plants as a “clandestine cannabis grow op”. Apparently there is nothing wrong with seizing property because the owner chooses to grow the wrong plants. Why tell the truth, that a grow op is nothing more than a green house and any dangers related to grow ops would be eliminated by repealing the prohibition against growing this wonderful plant. The idiot ends the article with an ode to an addict who overcame his love of cocaine to win a gold medal at the Olympics. If social stigmas and banning from the sport he loves can “help” Eric Lamaze, why it will work on every addict.
Did you know that the RCMP are on their way to taking $5 million worth of marijuana off of the streets? It’s true. They are using their police plane to stop grow ops in Comox Valley, BC. They fly around in the air, spewing toxic waste into the environment, finding and destroying innocent plants. If this was a sane world, this would not be celebrated in a local newspaper but excoriated as the waste of tax money that it is. Instead, they celebrate it with prize quotes like this:
“What is grown up here is going to be sold in communities up and down Vancouver Island and possibly beyond, so there’s a benefit for all communities to see these destroyed and take that amount off the street.”
Maybe that cannabis was going to be used to make a cancer patients life easier. Or maybe it was going to be ingested by responsible adults as a cheap and effective insomnia cure. Nobody should be punished for ingesting a drug that has never caused a death in its’ use over thousands of years. But nobody seems to care about that.
I hate reefer madness propaganda so much.
My kid has mad video making skills. I have no idea how to use CyberLink Power Director or whatever the nerdlingers in my house used to make this video. I’m jealous of their skillz. You can get to know Corby even better! She is soooooo cute.
Let me introduce you to Winston, the ten-year-old Jack Russell terrier that is keeping it real in Saskatoon. Although he is seventy in dog years, he is young at heart. He enjoys sniffing butts and peeing on trees. In this picture, he is in full on sniff mode, as he has detected the presence of a smaller, fluffier creature. He longs to kill something small and innocent, but I am afraid that the children will not allow it. When Hannah was little she caught him trying to eat a baby bird and kicked his bum and shrieked, “Leave the baby bird alone, you BAD DOG!!” Since that day, he has been too stricken by guilt to indulge in his darker impulses. Which is a good thing because Winston’s world revolves around me and I don’t want him putting dead mice on my pillow like my cat used to do. It’s bad enough that he poops when I tell him to.
I love this picture because of the long, drawn-out shadows.
And now for a look at the puppy face! Ahhhhhhhh.
I read this criticism of Barack Obama in the Star Phoenix, that people think he is too cerebral.
Now I have done my very best to unplug from the run for President because I find the whole thing way too depressing. I mean, is this what passes for political discourse these days? Can being too smart hamper your political campaign? I think my head just exploded.
O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
I have a horrible confession to make. Before I say this I will say that I love my country. I love Canada, it’s the greatest country in the world and I am so glad I live here. And I have spent many times standing on guard for thee, singing this song loudly and proudly. Giving stern dirty looks to kids that squirm when they are supposed to be singing and showing their pride in their country. I have spent enough time showing love to Canada. But here it comes. Read more…
As you read this I am back at school. But it’s OK. I have had a great and wonderful summer full of delight and joy. Lots of lounging about in the sand and splashing around in the water. Lots of catching up with friends and kid-free time. But I am ready to go back to work. For one thing I miss being around other adults (besides my partner) and I have had enough quality time with the children. I am beginning to feel like a momma cat. When I was a kid I had this really great cat with a litter of kittens. She was a great mother and took very good care of her babies, licking them and feeding them when they were small and taking them to the farmer’s field for hunting lessons when they got older. But every so often she would get fed up with her bratty kids. They would climb all over her and fight with each other, requiring her to bare her teeth and swat at the kittens to keep them in line. Then she would pick them up by the scruff of the neck and drop them down a hole in the back of the closet.
I am that mother cat.
On Wednesday they go back to school so I won’t have to drop them down any holes. The really funny thing is that the kids want to go back to school. Can you imagine? When I was a child I would have died before admitting that I missed school. You would think that between Club Penguin and Webkinz and television and chores and trips to the swimming pool and two doting parents that these kids would be entertained enough. Maybe public education isn’t as bad as I feared.
Everywhere that you look in the city of Saskatoon, you see Help Wanted signs. They make tempting offers of bonuses and choice shifts. There was never a better time to be a teenager in need of a job. Employers are crawling all over each other, looking for employees. The starting wages offered are nowhere near the minimum wage of $8.60. It is obvious that we are in the midst of a labor shortage.
What we need are more immigrants to fill all of these jobs. So why are we making it so difficult for them to come here and then pay off their travel fees? In the case of Phillipo Kijori-Amisi and his family, they are extremely grateful to be living in Canada and attribute their luck to the goodwill of God. Burundi was torn apart by Hutu-Tutsi violence and the family fled to Canada.
They are happy to be in Canada yet I can’t help but be angered by the fact that these families get trapped by debt. That just seems wrong, especially at a time when there are so many jobs. But with the housing shortage and high rents, adding a travel debt seems really wrong. Immigrants will become taxpayers and we definitely need more of those. Make it easier to come here, not harder.
